Eliana Willis

Lee Miller lived a life of many chapters—a Surrealist in 1930s Paris, a World War II photographer, a model for Vogue, a muse to Man Ray and Picasso.  
This fall, Gagosian will offer a glimpse into the American-born photographer’s private life and world with “Seeing Is Believing: Lee Miller and Friends,” an exhibition of work centered on Miller’s marriage to Roland Penrose, the English Surrealist painter, collector, art historian, and famed Picasso biographer. Curated by Jason Ysenburg and Richard Calvocoressi, “Seeing Is Believing” will open at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue location in New York on November 11, 2023.  
The exhibition will present photographs by both Miller and Penrose as well as pull back to shine a light on their social circle. Over the four decades of their relationship, Miller and Penrose cultivated an influential artistic and literary milieu during time spent in the South of France, London, and traveling in the U.S. After moving to East Sussex in 1949, the couple earned reputations as spectacular hosts—Picasso, Man Ray, and Max Ernst were among the couple’s many guests at their home known as Farleys House. Reflecting the centrality of these friendships in the couple’s lives, the exhibition also presents paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works on paper by these artists, plus Joseph Cornell, Dora Maar, Henry Moore, and Valentine Penrose.  
The exhibition coincides with a moment of renewed fascination with Lee Miller as an artist and person.  
The highly anticipated film LEE, directed by Ellen Kuras—which stars Kate Winslet as Miller during her years as a war correspondent and photographer—debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. The film is based on the book The Lives of Lee Miller (1985) by Antony Penrose, the couple’s son. Meanwhile, Love Letters Bound in Gold Handcuffs, a hitherto unreleased collection of correspondence between Miller and Penrose, was released in the U.K. in July and is hitting shelves in the U.S. in November. The intimate letters reveal the depth of love, laughter, and tragedy that marked the couple’s 40-year relationship. “Seeing Is Believing” will likewise feature mementos of Miller and Penrose’s life together, including letters, albums, and ephemera that offer new insights into the couple’s private world.
“Seeing Is Believing: Lee Miller and Friends” runs November 11–December 23, 2023, at Gagosian Gallery, 976 Madison Avenue, New York
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Museums across the U.S. are busily ramping up for the fall season, with exhibitions celebrating both familiar and lesser-known names and movements. There is, in short, a lot to look forward to, with fresh scholarship around old favorites and discoveries from under-studied milieus. Here, our shortlist of shows to carry you straight through to the new year.

“Remedios Varo: Science Fictions”Art Institute of ChicagoJuly 29–November 27, 2023
Creación de las aves (Creation of the Birds) (1957). © 2023 Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VEGAP, Madrid.
During her lifetime, Spanish-born Surrealist artist Remedios Varo was hailed as a cultural treasure in her adopted homeland of Mexico, where she had fled at the dawn of World War II in Europe. Throughout the 1950s up to her death in 1963, Varo created hypnotic Surrealist visions that blended imagery drawn from mysticism, the tarot, and psychology. Varo has risen to global acclaim over the past 15 years as art historians reassess the legacies of women artists in the Surrealist movement. “Science Fictions” marks the first museum exhibition devoted to Varo in the United States since 2000. This luminous exhibition brings together 20 paintings as well as materials from the artist’s archive, including notebooks, sketches, and personal possessions, that offer insight into Varo’s mind and the hidden orders and systems she saw in the world all around us. One of the gems of the exhibition Harmony pictures a composer seeking an “invisible thread that unites all things.” —Katie White 

“Ed Ruscha: Now Then”Museum of Modern Art, New YorkSeptember 10, 2023–January 13, 2024
Ed Ruscha, Hey with Curled Edge (1964). Courtesy of MoMA.
The show is billed as the most comprehensive presentation of the beloved artist’s work to date, and—somewhat curiously—his first solo exhibition at MoMA. It spans 65 years of the artist’s illustrious career and reflects his cross-disciplinary approach, encompassing 200 works produced from 1958 to the present. Fans of Ruscha will not be surprised to see the full scope of his output—paintings, drawings, prints, film, photography, artist’s books, and installations—displayed according to a loose chronology. Of special note is the New York debut of the artist’s rarely realized 1970 installation Chocolate Room, which lines an entire gallery with sheets of paper coated in the titular confection.  —Eileen Kinsella

“Abraham Ángel: Between Wonder and Seduction”Dallas Museum of ArtSeptember 10, 2023–January 28, 2024
Abraham Ángel, Self-Portrait / Autorretrato (1923). Museo Nacional de Arte. INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura, Mexico City.
It’s been nearly 100 years since Abraham Ángel painted his last canvas at just 19 years of age, shocking the Mexican art world of the 1920s. Although his artistic legacy has often been overshadowed by the circumstances surrounding his death, a new show at the Dallas Museum of Art makes the case that Mexican Modernism would not have been the same without the efforts—however brief—of the young artist, who channeled a newfound vitality in the 24 total works he produced in three years, four of which are thought to be lost. This important survey of Ángel’s oeuvre is the first of its kind in more than 35 years and the first dedicated exhibition of his paintings in the United States, exposing fresh audiences to the forever-rising art star. —Lee Carter

“Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas”Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.September 15, 2023–June 2, 2024
Alma Thomas, The Eclipse (1970). Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Alma Thomas is one of those women artists whose profile has risen considerably in recent years—thanks in large part to the Obamas hanging one her paintings at their apartment in the White House in 2009. But while she had languished in relative obscurity following her death in 1978, the Smithsonian American Art Museum was well ahead of the game, acquiring no less than a dozen works by the artist during Thomas’s lifetime, plus 13 she bequeathed to the institution upon her death. Now, the museum is staging a traveling show of Thomas’s luminous color field paintings that also explores her methods and techniques, which remained innovative even as her health declined. —Sarah Cascone

“Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction”Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)September 17, 2023–January 21, 2024
Left: Ed Rossbach, Damask Waterfall (1977). Photo: © Charles Benton. Courtesy The Artists’ Institute. Right: Andrea Zittel, White Felted Dress #3 (2002). © Andrea Zittel, photo © Museum Associates. Courtesy of LACMA.
With over 150 works by artists around the world, the refreshingly brainy exhibition “Woven Histories” examines the little-understood intersection between abstract art and woven textiles—as well as pre-loom crafts such as basketry, knotting, and netting—over the past century, and their impact on society and beyond. While the connection may at first seem threadbare, the show argues that each is partially responsible for the other’s existence; they are inextricably enlaced with each other. “Much is telegraphed consciously and unconsciously through the significations of cloth,” posits Lynne Cooke, a senior curator of modern art at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, which helped organized the show. “Clothing underpins the myriad forms of art-making showcased in this exhibition.”  —Lee Carter

“Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick”Frick Collection, New YorkSeptember 21, 2023—January 7, 2024
Barkley L. Hendricks, Lawdy Mama (1969). The Studio Museum in Harlem; gift of Stuart Liebman in memory of Joseph B. Liebman. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
This presentation of 14 early paintings by the pioneering American artist celebrates the remarkable figurative work of Hendricks through a focused group of portraits drawn from private and public collections. Starting in the late 1960s, Hendricks revolutionized contemporary portraiture by uniting portraits of Black figures with traditions of European painting. Here’s a serendipitous twist: Hendricks was one of many artists inspired by the Frick and counted it as one of his favorite museums, spending hours in the galleries observing iconic portraits by Rembrandt, Bronzino, Van Dyck, and others. —Eileen Kinsella

“Manet/Degas”Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkSeptember 24, 2023–January 7, 2024
Left: Edouard Manet, La prune (1877). Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Right: Edgar Degas Dans un café or L’absinthe (1875–76). Collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt.
This deep dive into the friendship—and rivalry—between Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas comes to the Met from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It pairs masterpieces by the two French artists dealing with similar subject matter in order to highlight the similarities and differences between their artistic approaches. In addition to 150 paintings and works on paper, the blockbuster show will provide additional context about the two men’s friends, family, and the intellectual milieu in which they created side by side. —Sarah Cascone

“Fashioned by Sargent”Museum of Fine Arts, BostonOctober 8, 2023–January 15, 2024
John Singer Sargent, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) (1883–84). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916.
John Singer Sargent is widely regarded as the greatest portraitist of his era. His elegant portraits of his wealthy clientele were particularly coveted for their sartorial stylings and his sumptuous depictions of fabrics. This ravishing exhibition of approximately 50 paintings delves into Sargent’s eye for style and the ways the American artist sometimes dressed and often modified his sitter’s costumes to exploit their effects. Among the highlights of the exhibition are fashion-forward paintings such as Madame X, Lady Agnew, and Dr. Pozzi at Home. Visitors will also be able to see several of the original garments worn by sitters alongside their portraits. —Katie White 

“William Blake: Visionary”Getty Center, MalibuOctober 17, 2023–January 14, 2024
William Blake, Satan Exulting over Eve (1795). Courtesy of Getty Museum.
This major Blake retrospective, co-organized with the Tate, was a hit in London in 2019–2020, and the L.A. stop was delayed by the pandemic. But now it’s here, and the Romantic wild man William Blake (1757–1827) is always timely. Yes, this is the show that had the two museums team up with Apple to unleash Augmented Reality versions of Blake’s visions into the world—but don’t be put off by the gimmicks (though by all means enjoy them if that’s your thing). “William Blake: Visionary” promises to highlight Blake’s most celebrated works via a bevy of important international loans, exploring his innovations in printmaking, his fusion of poetry and graphic art, and his glorious and passionate cosmology that has enchanted generations of admirers. —Ben Davis

“Dorothea Lange: Seeing People”National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.November 5, 2023–March 31, 2024
Dorothea Lange, Hitch-hiking from Joplin, Missouri, to a sawmill job in Arizona. On U.S. 66 near Weatherford, western Oklahoma (1938). Courtesy of National Gallery of Art.
Dorothea Lange is more than just Migrant Mother, her celebrated photo of poverty in California—but Migrant Mother does encapsulate something, specifically Lange’s ability to capture her subjects with directness, but in a way that also makes them represent something bigger and teases out a spirit of endurance and dignity. “Dorothea Lange: Seeing People” focuses on her rich black-and-white portraits made in the 1930s while she was working for the New Deal Farm Services Administration. Lange’s eye helped shape our memories of this era, so it’s amazing that the images still have so much power to move: from a grandfather solemnly hoisting his grandson on his shoulder at the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar; to an overhead shot of quiet, serious men waiting for unemployment relief; to a shot of a scrawny boy, child of impoverished tenant farmers in the Black Belt of Alabama, working the fields alone. Whenever I hear that government art support in the high New Deal era produced “no masterpieces,” I always reply by pointing to these images. —Ben Davis

“Bonnard’s Worlds”Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TexasNovember 5, 2023–March 31, 2024
Pierre Bonnard, Woman with a Dog (1922). The Phillips Collection. © 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York.
The Kimbell’s first exhibition dedicated to the works of French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) was inspired by its 2018 acquisition of Landscape at Le Cannet (1928). The show will explore the various sensory realms that drove the painter’s creative practice—from the most public spaces to the most private. It’s comprised of roughly 70 of Bonnard’s best works that span the length of his career, and will reunite celebrated works from museums in Europe and the United States, as well as many unfamiliar to the public from private collections around the world. —Eileen Kinsella

“Botticelli Drawings”De Young/Legion of Honor, San FranciscoNovember 18, 2023–February 11, 2024
Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (‘Madonna of the Rose Garden’) (ca. 1468). Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, inv. 286 / L 3936 © RMN Grand Palais. Photo: Tony Querrec.
This show of 27 drawings is the first major museum show devoted to the quintessential Renaissance artist’s work. It will reunite rare works from across the U.S. and Europe, presented exclusively at the Legion of Honor—and is the first exhibition to explore the central role that drawing played in Botticelli’s art and workshop practice. The artist is best known for some of the world’s greatest paintings, including La Primavera (1477–1482) and The Birth of Venus (1484–1486), and he has inspired innumerable artists past and present. —Eileen Kinsella
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September marks the end of summer, back to school, return to office—and the start of art-fair season. Coinciding with Armory Week in New York, dozens of gallery exhibitions are opening across the city this week. From emerging artists debuting at new galleries and established artists presenting new bodies of work, it’s an exciting time to go gallery-hopping.
Looking at whose been generating a lot of buzz lately, undertaken important projects recently, and, frankly, whose work caught our eye, we’ve rounded up 10 solo shows that you should definitely have on your radar.
Sheida Soleimani, “Birds of Passage”Denny Gallery, September 5–October 7, 2023
Sheida Soleimani. Photo: Eden Tai. Courtesy of Denny Gallery.
Sheida Soleimani’s ongoing series “Ghost Writer” sees the artist construct elaborate photographic vignettes through which she “ghostwrites” the lives and histories of her parents (specifically within their context as dissidents in post-1979 Iran) and other refugees—those currently seeking asylum in Europe, as well as in pre- and post-9/11 America. The series debuted at Providence College Galleries and Edel Assanti in London, and earlier this summer went on view at the MFA Boston in the solo exhibition “Banner Project.”
Now, the newest installment goes on view this month at Denny Gallery in “Birds of Passage.” Here Soleimani continues her artistic investigation with her parents. Using her signature vibrant collaged backdrops and meticulously staged objects, Soleimani illustrates their lives and memories, hopes and dreams, offering a visual exploration of personal and collective narratives.
Sheida Soleimani, Dissident (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Denny Gallery.
Austin Martin White“Lost in the Sauce” at Derek Eller Gallery, September 5–October 7, 2023“Family Dysphoria” at Petzel, September 13–November 4, 2023
Austin Martin White, troubled heritage (book cover) (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery, New York.
Based in Philadelphia, Austin Martin White has a double-header of gallery exhibitions going on view this month: a show of new paintings at Derek Eller Gallery, “Lost in the Sauce,” and “Familiar Dysphoria” at Petzel, which has announced concurrent representation of the artist. The artist’s simultaneous shows are a feat, considering his very first solo was held only last year at Capitain Petzel in Berlin.
For this recent body of work, White researched 18th-century colonial Mexico, in particular the genre of “casta” paintings, which served as a tool of racial codification based on an individual’s proximity to whiteness. For the artist, a large part of the impetus behind this line of inquiry comes from uncertainty surrounding his own familial ancestry; he uses his art as a means to explore notions of belonging. In White’s compositions, hierarchies of identity and historical memory are made material through layers of paint, acrylic medium, and spray paint across surfaces such as screened mesh, resulting in highly tactile, emotionally charged compositions that resist easy reading.
Austin Martin White, Three framed works (casta) (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York.
Brandi Twilley, “Crest Foods”Sargent’s Daughters, September 6–October 14, 2023
Brandi Twilley. Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters.
For her fourth solo show with Sargent’s Daughters, Oklahoma City-based painter Brandi Twilley created more than 40 small-scale oil paintings. In these works, Twilley revisits the time in her life when she worked as a cleaner at the local Oklahoma grocery store chain, and also the title of the exhibition, “Crest Foods.”The empty aisles and fluorescent lighting in several works evoke the idea of liminal spaces or backrooms, as haunting as they are fascinating. Tempered with moments of dark humor and natural beauty—such as a parking lot sunset—the show brings viewers into Twilley’s personal relationship and history with a specific place and time in her life. The artist’s brushwork is decidedly unselfconscious, with lights, store shelves, and text (sometimes legible, sometimes not), often painted in a single stroke, evoking the sense of looking at a hazy memory.The paintings also offer a poignant glimpse into working-class day-to-day life and realities, as well as the oft unseen histories and trajectories that ultimately inspire artists who also hold day or concurrent jobs.
Brandi Twilley, 7 AM (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters.
Arcmanoro Niles, “A Moment Alone in the Shade”Lehmann Maupin, September 7–November 4, 2023
Arcmanoro Niles. Photo: Jason Frank Rothenberg Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin.
Arcmanoro Niles is best known for his almost impossibly vivid figurative paintings, wherein he has developed a technique of layering a range of bright hues that makes his canvases appear to glow. “A Moment Alone in the Shade” marks a significant shift in Niles’s approach, as it is his first exhibition of exclusively works on paper. Followers of the artist’s bold and colorful canvases won’t want to miss this exciting new development in the artist’s practice, which accesses a greater sense of immediacy and rawness.
Drawing inspiration from an archive of personal photographs, comprised of everything from family photo albums to pictures from old cellphones, Niles interprets and brings to life these personal, bygone moments while continuing to hone his mastery of color. Though known for focusing on the mundane and banal in his painting to explore contemporary narratives, this newest body of work offers a deeper investigation into ideas around memory, emotional vulnerability, and family ties.
Arcmanoro Niles, I Know I’m a Lucky Man (I Would Never Say Never Again) (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, “light takes time to reach us”Candice Madey, September 6–October 21, 2023
Stacy Lynn Waddell. Photo: Lissa Gotwals. Courtesy of the artist and Candice Madey.
If you’ve ever found yourself mesmerized by the golden glow of a Gustav Klimt painting or a Japanese folding screen landscape with a golden sky, Stacy Lynn Waddell’s “light takes time to reach us” at Candice Madey should be at the top of your list of exhibitions to visit. The show follows Waddell’s tenure as artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, which culminated in the large-scale project “Home House” on the façade of the museum.
Waddell’s second solo show with Candice Madey features a series of landscapes crafted from layered precious metals, a gilded portrait, and a collection of silver leafed, low-relief pastiglia works depicting. The artist used Winslow Homer’s 1899 watercolor and graphite After the Hurricane, Bahamas as a jumping-off point for this new body of work (19th-century American art and culture is a frequent source of inspiration in her practice). Through both the compositional and material elements of the works in the show, Waddell investigates man’s relationships with—and sometimes paradoxes of—nature, hierarchies of value, and social structures.
Later this year, Waddell will temporarily relocate to Umbria, Italy, as the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow, as well as to oversee the installation of A Moon For A Sun at Sala I, Rome.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled #6 (awakening after the Gulf Stream and the Hurricane) (2023). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of the artist and Candice Madey.
Eamon Ore-Giron, “Talking Shit”James Cohan, September 8–October 21, 2023
Eamon Ore-Giron. Photo: Fabian Guerrero. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan.
Following on the heels of “Competing with Lightning,” a solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Austin that showcased works from more than two decades of his career, for his second solo exhibition with James Cohan, Eamon Ore-Giron expands upon his series “Talking Shit,” which he undertook in 2017 while based in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The multidisciplinary artist is widely recognized for his distinctive artistic style that synthesizes elements of indigenous visual cultures and craft traditions with modern movements such as Suprematism, De Stijl, and Concrete art. Presenting a body of work comprising paintings, textiles, and pieces in ceramic tile, the artist explores the nature and history of symbols, specifically those drawn from Mexico and Peru—as well as how those symbols are transmuted over time and across cultures.

Eamon Ore-Giron, Talking Shit with Inti (2023). Photo: Charles White. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan.
Awol Erizku, “Delirium of Agony”Sean Kelly, September 8–October 21, 2023
Awol Erizku. Photo: Michael Tyrone Delaney. Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly.
The Los Angeles-based artist (and Beyoncé chronicler) Awol Erizku joined Sean Kelly last year, and his solo exhibition “Delirium of Agony” is his first with the gallery. Interrogating cultural iconography from a variety of contemporary perspectives—hip-hop, art history, and sports, to name a few—Erizku deconstructs facets of the art-historical canon and history itself as a means of finding new ways of understanding culture today.
The exhibition will span the entirety of the gallery, and include work from a diverse range of mediums, including paintings, neon installations, photographs, sculptures, and works on paper, and employ what he refers to as “Afro-esotericism”: his unique Afrocentric aesthetic.
Erizku’s first monograph, Mystic Parallax, was recently released by Aperture, and the artist will be on hand to sign copies at the gallery on September 9.
Awol Erizku, Now Shoo, (Fly)Children, Stop Lookin’ at Her Tits (2023). Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly.
Jane Dickson, “Promised Land”Karma, September 9–October 28, 2023
Jane Dickson. Photo: Dondre Stuetley. Courtesy of the artist and Karma.
Once described as “the painter of American Darkness” by friend and fellow artist Nan Goldin, Jane Dickson has lived and worked in New York since 1977. Inspired by the gritty milieu of the city in that period, her figurative paintings offer a voyeuristic glimpse into the views and lives of the urban underbelly.
Shortly after moving to New York, Dickson began working on the Spectacolor sign—the first animated-light board in Times Square. She went on to curate and participate in “Messages to the Public,” a text-based series of activations to which Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, and David Hammons also contributed. For her exhibition “Promised Land” at Karma, Dickson symbolically returns to this style of text-based works. Using her own archive of nighttime and nightlife photography from the past 40 years, Dickson has produced a new body of textual works by self-appropriating, cropping, and reframing her past work. Even remixed, they still evoke an atmosphere of “American Darkness,” adapted for a new era.
Jane Dickson, Save Time 2 (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Karma.
Bony Ramirez, “TROPICAL APEX”Jeffrey Deitch, September 9–October 21, 2023
Bony Ramirez. Photo by Elianel Clinton. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch.
The self-taught artist Bony Ramirez moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States at the age of 13 and has never returned. Though he has no photos from his early childhood, what he does have are powerful impressions of the country and culture—full of color and texture. Based in Harlem, and with a studio in Jersey City, Ramirez’s practice attempts to piece together, reconstruct, and imagine his life in the Caribbean as a child, as well as explore and celebrate the Dominican Republic’s culture and history.
In his exhibition “TROPICAL APEX” with Jeffery Deitch, visitors can enter Ramirez’s boldly colorful, imagined worlds, but are also invited to reflect on ideas around personal and collective histories, the boundaries of memory, and cultural narratives.
Bony Ramirez, The Annunciation (2023). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch.
Ozioma OnuzulikeMarc Straus Gallery, September 10–October 29, 2023
Ozioma Onuzulike. Courtesy of the artist and Marc Straus Gallery.
Marc Straus is presenting Nigerian artist Ozioma Onuzulike’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, showcasing works from four of the artist’s series, named for the materials they emulate: “Palm Kernel Shell Beads,” “Yam,” “Honeycomb,” and “Chainmail.” A renowned contemporary ceramic artist as well as poet and academic, Onuzulike weaves messages around colonialism, migration, and global warming into each of his series.
Onuzulike takes inspiration from everyday natural elements and then produces them en masse in clay. These individual, basic elements are then meticulously woven and constructed into tapestries and hanging sculptures, metaphorically and symbolically referencing the many cultures and histories of Africa—ranging from the slave trade and its aftermath to revered textile and clothing traditions and Africa’s natural resources.
The time-consuming and laborious task of creating these works is a feat to behold, and rewards close study in person, as the meticulous details and craftsmanship in Onuzulike’s nets capture the eye and convey complex stories that are specific in their detail but universal in their effect.
Ozioma Onuzulike, Peacock Weave (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Marc Straus Gallery.
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For thousands of years, ginseng has been believed to help to boost energy levels, and it’s likely to be in-demand this week in South Korea as Seoul Art Week returns. Programming around the sophomore edition of Frieze Seoul and the stalwart fair Kiaf Seoul appears to have grown this year; art world players are also said to be struggling with organizing their schedule because there are just too many gallery dinners, parties, and art openings to attend.
In sum, the packed event list can be seen as a vote of confidence for the market in South Korea despite recent reports of sales decline. Besides openings at commercial galleries, top international auction houses are staging large-scale exhibitions that are not to miss. Christie’s is teaming up with Hyundai Card (a credit card company of Hyundai Motor Group) to stage “Heads On: Basquiat & Warhol,” a $150 million spectacle of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol.
For its part, Sotheby’s will be presenting “Love in Paradise,” an exhibition that unites Banksy and Keith Haring, featuring the South Korean public debut of Banksy’s famed shredded artwork Girl without Balloon (2021). And Phillips has assembled works by more than 30 artists from around the world, including up-and-coming artists and blue chip names, for the selling exhibition “Briefly Gorgeous” at Songwon Art Center.
Those who are keen on discovering Korean talents should check out shows staged by the art world arms of the fashion giants Prada and Hermes, which will each be presenting Korean artists, or head to the MMCA and Songeun Art and Cultural Foundation, which are respectively staging group exhibitions of Korean contemporary art.
We sifted through the long lists of shows and events and plucked out five exhibitions that deserve your attention.
Kim Beom: “How to become a rock”On view at Leeum through December 3
Kim Beom, Swan (2004). Courtesy Leeum Museum of Art. ⓒ Kim Beom.
The opening of Kim Beom’s show at Leeum in July was met with great expectations; the exhibition is the first major solo presentation of the artist in 13 years, despite the fact that the 60-year-old is championed as one of the most important Korean contemporary artists. The presentation includes quirky installations and conceptual pieces spanning three decades of Kim’s creative output.
Leeum, 60-16, Itaewon-ro 55-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, 04348
Kangja Jung: “Dear Dream, Fantasy, and Challenge”Arario MuseumThrough September 10
Installation view of Kangja Jung: “Dear Dream, Fantasy, and Challenge” ⓒ 2023 ARARIO MUSEUM.
When Kangja Jung first emerged in the Korean art scene with her 1968 performance, Transparent Balloons and Nude, she was dismissed by critics. Jung persevered, becoming a pioneer who was well ahead of her time and who is now recognized as the first known feminist nude performer in South Korea.
As a member of the Korean Young Artists Association Exhibition, she was also at the forefront of the country’s avant-garde art movement before she relocated to Singapore with her family in 1970, effectively vanishing from the Korean art scene for over a decade. Upon returning to Korea in 1981, she focused on painting, transcending her critical spirit onto canvas. This exhibition explores Jung’s journey via archival materials, paintings, and batik works made in the 1970s and ’80s.
Arario Museum, 83, Yulgok-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 03058
Suh Yongsun: “My Name is Red”Art Sonje CenterThrough October 22
Suh Yongsun, Lying on the Sea (2012). Courtesy the artist and Art Sonje Center.
Born in Seoul in 1951, Suh Yongsun studied painting and is highly regarded in the South Korean art world for his depiction of “human existence,” with his works that often reference historical events or characters with signature broad brushstrokes, bold colors, and rough texture. The aesthetics of his work, which brings together a traditional Korean style with European influences, has set him apart from the popular trend of minimalism in the country.
Art Sonje Center, 87, Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 03062
Lawrence Weiner: “Under the Sun”Amorepacific Museum of ArtThrough January 28, 2024
Lawrence Weiner, SMASHED TO PIECES (IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT) (1976). Courtesy Pace Gallery.
“Under the Sun” marks the artist’s Asian debut and the first expansive solo institutional show after his death in 2021. The show at Amorepacific Museum of Art features 47 text-based sculptures juxtaposed against the institution’s Korean art collection, with an aim to create a new visual dialogue.
Also on view are edition works, drawings, posters, and video by Weiner, as well as acclaimed early works from the 1970s, such as SMASHED TO PIECES (IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT) (1971) and TO SEE AND BE SEEN (1972). Pace Gallery has recently announced that it now represents the artist’s estate in Asia—Weiner’s work will be shown at the gallery’s booth at Frieze Seoul.
Amorepacific Museum of Art, 100 Hangang-daero, Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
Kim Kulim: “Kim Kulim” MMCAThrough February 12
Kim Kulim, Civilization, Woman, Money, film 1969, video 1969-2016, single-channel video, color, sound, 22 min. 10 sec. MMCA collection.
The solo exhibition of Kim Kulim brings together the artist’s expansive body of work from the 1950s to today. Dubbed the founding father of Korean multimedia art, Kim’s paintings from the 1960s, made in the wake of the Korean War, as well as his performances and installations made in decade that followed, have become key reference points in Korean art history. A total of 230 works and 60 pieces of archival materials are included in this career-spanning show.
MMCA, 30 Samcheong-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
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The origins of modern art are typically traced back to the formal deconstructions of Cubism or Duchamp’s conceptual games. Comparatively little is said about the earlier influence of the Fauves, led by Henri Matisse and his friend André Derain, who carried the radical ideas of post-Impressionists like Cézanne and Van Gogh into the 20th century.
The movement, known for its painterly style and strong use of color, is finally getting its due with “Matisse, Derain and Friends,” a major survey show that opened last weekend, on September 2, at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland.
The show, which is on view until January 21, 2024, seeks to challenge the conventional understanding of Fauvism as a boy’s club, by showcasing the contributions of its much lesser known women members. It also highlights the long-overlooked experiences of sex workers who are subject of some of the Fauvists’ paintings.
Installation view of “Matisse, Derain and Friends” at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Photo: Gina Folly.
Perhaps the best known female Fauve was Émilie Charmy who, after becoming orphaned at a young age, refused the kind of teaching jobs someone of her sex and social status would usually gravitate towards. Instead, she chose to study under the artist Jacques Martin and managed to support herself by producing charming, decorative interior scenes and still-lives.
In private, however, Charmy’s practice was highly avant-garde, and she is now best known for her intriguingly ambiguous self-portraits and seductive female nudes. After moving to Paris in 1903, she befriended the Fauves, including Matisse and Charles Camoin, the latter of whom she became romantically involved with. In one 1906 self-portrait, she shows herself lying back with one breast exposed, a daringly risqué choice at a time when a woman’s modesty was of paramount importance.
Émilie Chamry, Self-portrait (1906). Photo: Studio GIBERT, courtesy of Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris.
“Charmy, it would appear, sees like a woman and paints like a man,” the early 20th century writer Roland Dorgelès once remarked. “From the one she takes grace and from the other strength, and this is what makes her such a strange and powerful painter who holds our attention.”
Another woman member, Marie Laurencin, was variably dubbed la fauvette or la biche parmi les fauves (meaning the lady fauve or the doe among the wild beasts, respectively). She moved in the same circles as many modernist painters, including Georges Braques and Francis Picabia, both of whom she met as a student at the Académie Humbert, and Guillaume Apollinaire, who was at one time her lover. She is represented in the exhibition by a self-portrait of herself in the guise of the Romanic hunting goddess Diana and by her portrait of André Derain’s wife Alice.
Marie Laurencin, Diane à la chasse (1908). Photo courtesy of Musée Marie Laurencin, Tokyo.
These artists, and their male counterparts, owed some of their early success to Berthe Weill, one of the very first women to become an art dealer in Paris when she established her gallery in Montmartre at the turn of the century. She had a knack for spotting legendary modernist talents before they became well known—she was selling works by Pablo Picasso as early as 1900—and began exhibiting the Fauves in 1902, starting with Matisse and Albert Marquet.
At the same time that the group were scandalizing critics at the Salon in 1905, Weill organized her own show of works by Charmy, Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Camoin, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Henri Manguin. The critic Louis Vauxcelles clearly understood her role in promoting these highly experimental artists, remarking that “it was on the walls of [Mademoiselle] Weill’s that the Fauves were first seen. [The male dealers] Vollard and Druet came later.”
Émilie Charmy, Berthe Weill (1910-1914). Photo courtesy of Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris.
Another little known advocate for the Fauves was Matisse’s wife Amélie Parayre-Matisse, who had been working at her aunt’s hat shop when they met in 1898. At that time, Matisse struggled to make a living from his art, so Amélie supported him and their three children with the money she earned from her textile designs.
Sex Workers as Overlooked Subjects
Most of the 160 artworks included in the exhibition were inspired by everyday life, and therefore provide excellent insight into the social history of Paris in the early 1900s. The show’s catalog has brought to light important new research by the historian Gabrielle Houbre about the experiences of sex workers, who often appeared in these paintings as models.
Hot spots for solicitation that were visited by the Fauves include dance halls like the Moulin Rouge, the artistic café Rat Mort, both in Paris, where they met dancers who posed for both Vlamnick and Derain, as well as London’s Regent Street, where some French women were illegally trafficked. Many of the portrayals sensitively capture a certain style or mood, as in the case of Auguste Chabaud’s Femme à la cravate rouge (Woman with a Red Tie) (1907) of Yvette, a woman that he was hopelessly in love with.
Kees van Dongen, Modjesko, Soprano Singer (1908). Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA/Scala, Florence.
In 1908, the Dutch artist Kees van Dongen painted drag performer Claude Modjesko, who had been born in South Carolina in the late 1870s to formerly enslaved parents. He began performing in minstrel shows as a teenager before moving to Europe in 1898, where he sang under the stage name “the Black Patti” and supplemented his income through sex work.
Van Dongen, who often frequented cabarets and brothels to look for subjects, first saw him at the Circus Variété in Rotterdam in July 1907.
Auguste Chabaud, Le Moulin Rouge, la nuit (1907) Photo: Studio Monique Bernaz, courtesy of Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Geneva.
With a similar appetite for a city’s more seedy side, Camoin became a regular observer at Rue Bouterie in Marseille’s notorious red-light district. One sex worker from the strip posed for Nu aux bottines noires (Nude with Black Boots) (1905), which, despite the bold, almost confrontational stance, historian Houbre reads as an idealized, erotic, and healthy subject whose appearance does not reflect the stigma then associated with prostitution. It may be wishful thinking: that same year Marquet wrote to Matisse that he and Camoin had enjoyed a visit to the bars of Saint-Tropez to look for artistic inspiration and left with “some painful memories and a large stock of pharmaceuticals.”

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Curator Azu Nwagbogu has revealed his plans for the first-ever Benin pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Titled “Everything Precious is Fragile,” the group show will feature the work of four contemporary Beninese artists: Romuald Hazoumé, Chloe Quenum, Ishola Akpo, and Moufoli Bello, each of whom has been tasked with creating site-specific work for the ocassion.
Nwagbogu, founder of Nigerian non-profit African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), will co-curate the presentation with Yassine Lassisi and Franck Houndegla, according to the German publication Contemporary And, which first reported the new details about the highly anticipated exhibition. (The biennale has seen an influx of African countries participating for the first time in recent years, including Madagascar and Ghana in 2019.)
The Benin pavilion is expected to deal with issues of decolonization, restitution, and repatriation, which have been in the news of late as Nigeria seeks the return of the Benin Bronzes, a collection of royal sculptures that the British stole during the looting of Benin City in 1897.

The historic artworks, which date to the 13th century, are scattered across some 131 Western institutions—despite growing calls to return them to Africa. (Last year, the Glasgow Museums, the Smithsonian, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum began repatriating their bronzes, and the German government  transferred the ownership of 1,100 bronzes to Nigeria.)
In Venice, the Republic of Benin hopes to highlight the ties between contemporary artists working in the nation today and its precolonial past by showcasing work inspired by the nation’s rich history and artistic traditions.
Specifically, the pavilion will draw on what’s known as the Gèlèdé philosophy, a feminist Yoruba tradition based on the wisdom of the mother, to consider today’s ecological, political, and social issues. The idea is that contemporary society can benefit from looking back to the old ways, while also strengthening connections to indigenous heritage.

Bello, for instance, is known for her figurative paintings of Black African women with blue skin, inspired in part by the Yoruba people’s traditional use of blue indigo dye in their fabrics. And Akpo uses his photography to blend reality and fiction in series that reimagine cultic practices of Benin’s Nago hunters or honor Africa’s historic queens.
Hazoumé, the most-established of the four participating artists, is best known for creating sculptures that resemble traditional African masks but are made from discarded gasoline canisters.
Romuald Hazoumé, Claudia Maigre (2005). Photo courtesy of Galerie Gmurzynska.
“I send back to the West that which belongs to them, that is to say, the refuse of consumer society that invades us every day,” he has said of the series.
Benin’s presentation in Venice comes on the heels of “The Art of Benin of Yesterday and Today: from Restitution to Revelation,” an exhibition at the at the Palais de la Marina in Cotonou, Benin, of 26 looted Beninese artifacts from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris that the nation of France agreed to restitute in 2020.
Earlier this month, AAF opened the exhibition “Dig Where You Stand: From Coast to Coast” at the Palais de Lomé in Togo. Curated by Rosemary Esinam Damalie with curatorial advisory by Nwagbogu, the show, which debuted last year in Tamale, Ghana, features contemporary African artists dealing with similar themes as the upcoming Venice project, including decolonization and restitution.
“Everything Precious is Fragile,” the first Benin Pavilion, will be on view at the 60th Venice Biennale, April 20–November 24, 2024. 
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Banksy may not have had an authorized solo show in 14 years, but if anything, that seemed to stoke the demand for his recent outing at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), which set attendance records for the institution with 180,000 visitors over the show’s 10-week run.
Titled “Banksy: Cut and Run,” the exhibition enforced a strict no photographs rule—all cell phones had to be secured in locked pouches, at the anonymous British street artist’s request. But that apparently didn’t dampen enthusiasm from museum goers, who included actor Johnny Depp and Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp, according to the Scotland Herald.
“‘Cut and Run’ has welcomed a new and diverse audience, from primary school pupils to octogenarians, from all areas of society and corners of the globe,” GoMA director Gareth James said in a statement, as reported by the Independent, noting that the institution had to implement late-night hours to meet the audience demand. “Every day we open our doors to queues of hundreds of people waiting for walk-up tickets.”
It was the first time that the museum had charged paid admission for an exhibition. The show, which presented an in-depth retrospective of Banksy’s 25-year career, included a replica of the artist’s work station, a massive selection of his stencils, and all the behind-the-scenes details on how he got Love is in the Bin to infamously shred itself after hammering down for $1.3 million at Sotheby’s London.
The original stencil piece for Banksy’s Girl With Balloon, which infamously shredded itself after selling at auction at Sotheby’s London on display in “Banksy: Cut and Run” at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images.
If you missed the exhibition in Glasgow, it appears you can still get another bite at the apple, as Banksy has updated the show’s official website to solicit ideas for where to next present it.
“We want to take this show on the road but have no idea where to go next. Do you?” the website asked.
Banksy’s exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.
The artist is encouraging people to email their suggestions for the exhibition’s tour to [email protected], preferably with a specific location or venue in mind—not just a country or city—as well as photographs of the space.
The show does not, however, confirm any details regarding Banksy’s identity, which has sparked countless theories over the years. Last month, a recording from a 2005 episode of NPR’s All Things Considered resurfaced that featured a purported interview with the artist, who is believed to have been born in Bristol, England, around the year 1974. 

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